Tyndmyr wrote:An ambulance, no matter how good, still has to get to you, and when it does, will have fewer options than a full hospital. Getting autopiloted to a hospital seems potentially amazing.

An ambulance has a fully equipped resuscitation kit, medical professionals to use it, informative communication with the A&E, blues'n'twos and a driver trained to get the whole vehicle through traffic using them.

A driverless car might (its still doubtful) be able to do the latter, it tends to lack (unabusable) emergency lights/sounds/markings to aid its pazsage and until the (Daniel Craig) Casino Royale resusc-kit'n'comms gets added, you're as likely to get vehicles rolling up at hospitals completely unexpected and possibly carrying corpses.

If waiting for an ambulance (bringing treatment, even before it takes you to better treatment) is too much, perhaps forgo some of the paramedic aid and entrust yourself to a man-capable drone with a few monitoring attachments, either in your trunk or zooming out to you from one of the many handy emergency substations dotted around like cellphone masts.

Tyndmyr wrote:An ambulance, no matter how good, still has to get to you, and when it does, will have fewer options than a full hospital. Getting autopiloted to a hospital seems potentially amazing.

An ambulance has a fully equipped resuscitation kit, medical professionals to use it, informative communication with the A&E, blues'n'twos and a driver trained to get the whole vehicle through traffic using them.

A driverless car might (its still doubtful) be able to do the latter, it tends to lack (unabusable) emergency lights/sounds/markings to aid its pazsage and until the (Daniel Craig) Casino Royale resusc-kit'n'comms gets added, you're as likely to get vehicles rolling up at hospitals completely unexpected and possibly carrying corpses.

If waiting for an ambulance (bringing treatment, even before it takes you to better treatment) is too much, perhaps forgo some of the paramedic aid and entrust yourself to a man-capable drone with a few monitoring attachments, either in your trunk or zooming out to you from one of the many handy emergency substations dotted around like cellphone masts.

Ambulances are great, and these won't displace them.

But, if your options are "get driven to hospital immediately, while already in moving vehicle", or "stop, call ambulance, wait for ambulance", the former will probably be a good deal faster in many scenarios. An Ambulance isn't usually *all* that fast. They're still essentially cargo trucks, and while lights and sirens help, they're not going to physically cover miles all that fast relative to cars. You're probably going to get to a hospital in roughly the same time that it would take an ambulance to get to you. Maybe faster, depending on how fast you can tell your robut car to go to a hospital, vs talking to a dispatcher.

Yeah, it's not 100%. But good odds. Which is still something that should be weighed into the value of driverless cars.

Now, next gen, one could make allowances for getting the best of both. If a suitable emergency system exists in the vehicle, it's entirely possible for the car to start driving you there, notify a dispatcher, and have an ambulance meet your vehicle. That should produce better outcomes than virtually all current scenarios.

Soupspoon wrote:The trouble with this thread's headline case is that it didn't know it couldn't see. Blindfold a human, and he knows not even to attempt to drive, probably, Similarly, set him on an unlit road at night with no headlights of his own and he shouldn't drive off into the dark without a great amount of trepidation about neither seeing nor being seen.

However, humans do routinely outdrive their headlights at night. In fact, low beam headlights only provide clear illumination out to about 160 feet. That's shorter than the stopping distance from 40mph (assuming average reflexes and brakes).

So yes, humans make some judgements well, but they're really stupid about others.

In many situations I prefer low beam at night. High beam gives perfect illumination at medium distance, but totally fucks your night vision for the long distance. Low beams give good light at short distance and reasonable view at long distance.

Then again, I have been walking the dog for years at nigh summer or winter in the Dutch countryside on non-illuminated roads with quite a bit of ambient light from greenhouses reflecting on the clouds and stars on cloudless nights. Night vision is mostly a trainable thing, like muscles and math skills.(btw: I did bring a flashlight and wore a high viz neon yellow coat with retroreflective stripes. I'm not that kind of idiot. Just usually there was nobody on the road so I wouldn't need the flashlight.)

I'd like to take issue with one statement.

Night vision is mostly a trainable thing, like muscles and math skills.

Both True and False.

First: False.Life experience with genetics.

Spoiler:

My Mother could see like a cat.And; So could I.

It was no Big Deal to us.It was a pleasure and it was handy.

Just like vision in the light of day is a pleasure and is handy.On the other hand, bright, unfiltered sunlight was painful.

Some of my sweetest memories are of my Mother, and other female relatives talking in quite voices moving in moonlight.Moonlight coming through uncovered windows was enough light to do many things. (my mother came home in the dark)

To read a book, use a needle and thread or find a dropped object required light.I've made the mistake of driving without headlights, because I could see fine.

In the US I would, sometimes, drive all day.The sun would set, for me it was like a cloudy day.I could see trees, fences and the beasts in the fields.

The more time I spent in the dark,the better my night vision was.

It seemed to be the same for other female blood relatives.We talked about it, as individuals aged, they lost their night vision.

Eliza was 80. Virginia was only 75. Mae never lost her night vision.Alice, Patsy, Sally and the men, except George, never had night vision.

1) Not everyone has eyes like that.2) Our eyes change over time.

oh, and back on Topic.Like the man and the car,I have been blinded by light while driving.

Spoiler:

Sudden bright light, at just the right angle, on a dirty windshield has blinded me.Driving into the setting sun has provided me with multiple opportunities to be blinded by the light.

We learn tricks. And; We learn to use them; Fast. The visor is your friend. Keep your windows clean.

Second:True. We can develop 'skills'.The blind, people with No Vision, can be trusted to do many things in pitch black dark.Because they have developed skills.

I'm taking the stand:We can Not increase the number nor placement of the rods and cones in our eyes by willful practice.

We Can get good at operating in low light by willful practice.And! And! mini rant:

Spoiler:

I was able to learn some Math.And; I loved it, like a gift from the Gods.But; I never have and never will have Talent.

Life is, just, an exchange of electrons; It is up to us to give it meaning.

We are all in The Gutter.Some of us see The Gutter.Some of us see The Stars.by mr. Oscar Wilde.

Those that want to Know; Know.Those that do not Know; Don't tell them.They do terrible things to people that Tell Them.

Tyndmyr wrote:Yeah, it's not 100%. But good odds. Which is still something that should be weighed into the value of driverless cars.

Now, next gen, one could make allowances for getting the best of both. If a suitable emergency system exists in the vehicle, it's entirely possible for the car to start driving you there, notify a dispatcher, and have an ambulance meet your vehicle. That should produce better outcomes than virtually all current scenarios.

A sufficiently advanced system can even turn your car into a priority vehicle. If your car can tell other cars "I'm on route to a hospital on an emergency", and have this recognized by other cars, that's a huge gain. But that's not something that's going to happen soon.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

The whole thing is exaggerated anyway.I read an article where the headline said "Tesla car drives man to hospital", the blurb said "...drives man near hospital", and the article itself said finally "... drove to the nearest highway exit, where he felt fit enough to take over.".That's quite a degression.

Huh. That is...FAR less impressive. Enough so as to make the original article almost clickbait. Not criticizing the poster, I saw the same headline in multiple places, just slightly annoyed with the media.

Tyndmyr wrote:An Ambulance isn't usually *all* that fast. They're still essentially cargo trucks, and while lights and sirens help, they're not going to physically cover miles all that fast relative to cars.

Clearly, you haven't met ambulance drivers

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.

addams wrote:I was able to learn some Math.And; I loved it, like a gift from the Gods.But; I never have and never will have Talent.

If you learned some math, you have talent. Whether or not you have Talent is just a question of quantity and application.

Some people have a talent for developing Talent where they didn't have it before.Some people who have this talent never learn that they have it.

Spoiler:

My wife claims to have no musical talent, but I used to sing in choirs all the time and I play a few instruments. Not really all that well, but at least not painfully. Katie has attended many many of my concerts and has acquired an ear.

So, one day I'm entertaining her mom at an assisted living facility by playing the piano, and get called away (for irrelevant reasons). Katie's mom really wanted to hear piano music, so Katie sat down at the piano and started "fumbling around" while I was out of earshot. As I came back, I started hearing this really nice music and was wondering where it was coming from.

Yup. Katie.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

addams wrote:I was able to learn some Math.And; I loved it, like a gift from the Gods.But; I never have and never will have Talent.

If you learned some math, you have talent. Whether or not you have Talent is just a question of quantity and application.

Some people have a talent for developing Talent where they didn't have it before.Some people who have this talent never learn that they have it.

Spoiler:

My wife claims to have no musical talent, but I used to sing in choirs all the time and I play a few instruments. Not really all that well, but at least not painfully. Katie has attended many many of my concerts and has acquired an ear.

So, one day I'm entertaining her mom at an assisted living facility by playing the piano, and get called away (for irrelevant reasons). Katie's mom really wanted to hear piano music, so Katie sat down at the piano and started "fumbling around" while I was out of earshot. As I came back, I started hearing this really nice music and was wondering where it was coming from.

Yup. Katie.

Jose

What a lovely story.Thank you, Jose.

Has Katie gone on to learn to read music?Did it come easy to her? A gift in Octaves?

Life is, just, an exchange of electrons; It is up to us to give it meaning.

We are all in The Gutter.Some of us see The Gutter.Some of us see The Stars.by mr. Oscar Wilde.

Those that want to Know; Know.Those that do not Know; Don't tell them.They do terrible things to people that Tell Them.

We all have many buried talents. Some are undiscovered, others have been covered up.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

A lot of the concepts in that article were discussed in this topic already, but it seems like that article went into a lot more detail than what this topic has covered. (And I'm impressed! I feel like the discussion here was pretty good overall)

Its ultimately an article against Tesla's case, so maybe if you're on the pro-autopilot side you won't like the article. But there are numerous arguments in that article that I didn't think of or hear before.

A lot of the concepts in that article were discussed in this topic already, but it seems like that article went into a lot more detail than what this topic has covered. (And I'm impressed! I feel like the discussion here was pretty good overall)

Its ultimately an article against Tesla's case, so maybe if you're on the pro-autopilot side you won't like the article. But there are numerous arguments in that article that I didn't think of or hear before.

Eh, it's really just saying that there's not enough data to compare the Tesla autopilot with trad-driven autos, but that's not really new, interesting, or even particularly relevant, so they threw a bunch of flatulence into the air hoping, I can only imagine, that stench would cover the lack of any other content.

You can't say that a lack of data is an argument 'against' the Tesla autopilot, because the lack of data argument could equally be applied to any new automobile, newly licensed driver, or really any new technology at all. No one is seriously going to suggest not buying the latest Chevy sedan because it hasn't yet logged hojillions of driver-years to prove itself safe to the sixth sigma.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Wow, that article is incredibly critical of Tesla, and the very concept of autonomous cars. "Tesla quietly backs away from DISASTEROUS DEATH MACHINES in favor of MAKING YOU THEIR SLAVES IN THE DATA MINES to PUSH THE SKYNET DEATH MACHINE PROPAGANA AGENDA" is how this reads. Seriously, the article is barely less sensationalist than what I just wrote there.

The idea of having the autopilot record what it WOULD have done in a large data set of real world conditions to prove that it is safe is a good idea. If it's already safe, it can be proven so. If there turn out to be flaws, the flaws can be fixed, and then proven safe later. What the author's beef? Man...

Surely it is as ridiculous to consider sqrt(-1) "imaginary" because you can't use it to count pieces of chalk as to consider the number 200 imaginary because by itself it cannot express the location of one point with reference to another. -Isaac Asimov

I thought the article made a reasonable point: Tesla has took a serious step back on its autopilot project. They stopped shipping it indefinitely, but they packaged this in a PR story about how all the new cars will have new hardware. And it worked. I have seen multiple articles in regular news sources that presented this as a step forward, with a small note somewhere how some features are not yet available.

I don't think there's much of a mystery here. After the deadly crash earlier this year, Tesla had a fight with Mobileye, the key supplier of their driving system. Now Mobileye doesn't sell to Tesla anymore, and Tesla doesn't have a working system. They are working on an in-house replacement, but it's not finished yet. The new system relies on an Nvidia processing unit, instead of Mobileye dedicated hardware. They put in the Nvidia already in to have something to show, instead of nothing. It's a bit of a mess, but their spin is admirable as ever. And it might work out Ok for them, if they get the replacement working quick enough

A second investigation has been launched after footage emerged of a driver apparently asleep at the controls of a tram on the same line in London where a crash last week killed seven people.

A concerned passenger filmed the 32sec clip as the driver struggled to remain sitting upright around 3 miles from the derailment in Croydon, south London, the Sun reported.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was “extremely concerned” by the video and called for a full investigation.

The footage was filmed between the Coombe Lane and Gravel Hill stations shortly after 6pm on 21 April, according to the Sun.

The person who recorded the footage said: “It was the most surreal thing because the tram is zooming along and the driver seems to be falling asleep. If you are in charge of 50-plus lives and you’re that exhausted, it’s a dangerous thing.”

The footage surfaced as the tram line, operated by First Group and owned by Transport for London, reopened nine days after the fatal derailment, which injured more than 50 people.

The crash is believed to be the first in the UK involving fatalities on board a tram since 1959.

From HES's link. 55 plus years with no fatalities seems to be a pretty good record.

Additional context to that, though: Almost all historic UK tram networks are long defunct. From memory (and now also the upcoming link), only Blackpool's is actually 55+ years old to have deserved such a safety record. Old-style trams at places like Beamish and Crich are salvaged and rebuilt into the "living museum" setting, for nostalgic use and are not run so intensely.

Modern tram systems are the affected Croydon-based one in London (opened 2000) and Manchester (1992), Sheffield (1994), Birmingham (1999), Nottingham (since 2004), Edinburgh (2014). Of those, the only city I can find even serviced by trams since 1959 was Sheffield, that system was dismantled in 1960. Manchester's old network was shut in 1949, London as a whole (Goon Show excepted) stopped in 1952, Birmingham in 1953, Edinburgh in 1956, quick research found nothing prior for Nottingham but there probably was one, just as there would have been other cities that I've not even thought to investigate. A lucky guess, though, just revealed that Glasgow had the last 'city tramway', prior to the pre-millenium revival, up until its closure in 1962.

Fatalities by modern trams have happened a number of times, with pedestian, cyclist and car collisions (and many more of non-fatal nature). Those will have been almost entirely upon shared-use stretches, whilst there is a significantly greater emphasis upon segregated/cross-country routing (at the highest speeds) instead of the overwhelming amount of road-using/sharing track where contentions are most common.

It is only fatalities on them (presumably excluding incidental heart-attacks, if there have been any) through crashes that have been, up until now, completely lacking.

Having seen modern trams in operation in situ, I also wouldn't trust a completely automated system (no matter how many sensors!) to drive through the city-centre stretches, though. Automated systems for preventing Croydon-type crashes would be good, but unless somehow totally segregated from street traffic and pedestrians, I don't see non-tram people being comfortable with such a self-driving feature through non-exclusive spaces, where bells and horns are regularly used by drivers to shoo the unwary off of the tracks as they crawl alongmthe centre of a semi-pedestrianised high street, and I've experienced several jolting stops (as a passenger) when even that has not pierced the basic obliviousness of the odd pedestrian or pilot of a temporarily rogue non-tram vehicle.

Tyndmyr wrote:If a suitable emergency system exists in the vehicle, it's entirely possible for the car to start driving you there, notify a dispatcher, and have an ambulance meet your vehicle.

Even without the self driving part, having a system that can tell the dispatcher exactly where you are is a massive boost.

Of course you also need a dispatching system that can do something with that information. For several years, emergency operators in the UK were unable to accept anything other than a postcode / street address as a location. Some colleagues of mine waited hours for an ambulance to find them despite having given an Ordnance Survey grid reference and lat/long co-ordinates. I once called an ambulance to attend to a head injury at a railway station, but naming the station was not enough, they wanted to know the postcode. And another colleague of mine once phoned from his mobile to report some kids throwing bricks off a motorway bridge. Again, the number of the motorway and junction were not enough for the operator to dispatch the police, apparently. (I'm pretty sure these were not the fault of the operators, but of the IT system they were provided with).

So, yes, enabling direct machine-to-machine communication of things like location, cutting the wetware out of the equation, is probably a good thing.

Not necessarily the most re-assuring results... selective quotes from the article:

Tesla’s self-driving software, known as Autopilot, has proved adept at preventing Tesla cars from rear-ending other vehicles, but situations involving crossing traffic — as was the case in the crash that regulators investigated — “are beyond the performance capabilities of the system,” Mr. Thomas said.

Tesla has said its camera failed to recognize the white truck against a bright sky. But the agency essentially found that Mr. Brown was not paying attention to the road. It determined he set his car’s cruise control at 74 miles per hour about two minutes before the crash, and should have had at least seven seconds to notice the truck before crashing into it.

Neither Autopilot nor Mr. Brown hit the brakes. The agency said that although Autopilot did not prevent the accident, the system performed as it was designed and intended, and therefore did not have a defect.

On the brighter side...

The agency also noted that the frequency of crashes involving Tesla models declined by about 40 percent after the company introduced Autopilot.

Seems odd to say there's no defect when clearly there was something the system didn't catch. Of course if the system is designed such that it is not supposed to catch 100% of things (and hence needing the driver to still pay attention), I guess it sorta makes sense.

I think the public just needs educating on the difference between autopilot and self-drive. Planes fly on autopilot for all but a few minutes of the flight, yet the public would expect an alert pilot to be on hand at all times. The same is true for a Tesla.

As Google says, a true self-driving car shouldn't even have a steering wheel - to make it crystal clear that human intervention is not simple unnecessary but potentially counterproductive.

That seems rather unfair to me. Tesla, Google, and all the other car companies know how the public defines the word autopilot. Oxford Dictionary defines autopilot as, "short for automatic pilot," and one of the definitions of the phrase on automatic pilot is, "without concentration or conscious thought." To use a word with a definition that you know is different than the other person's is not just bad communication, it is flat out deceitful. It is like when food companies advertise that their product has less than X calories per serving, and then define 'serving' to be an unrealistically small quantity.

jewish_scientist wrote:That seems rather unfair to me. Tesla, Google, and all the other car companies know how the public defines the word autopilot. Oxford Dictionary defines autopilot as, "short for automatic pilot," and one of the definitions of the phrase on automatic pilot is, "without concentration or conscious thought." To use a word with a definition that you know is different than the other person's is not just bad communication, it is flat out deceitful. It is like when food companies advertise that their product has less than X calories per serving, and then define 'serving' to be an unrealistically small quantity.

That's why we need to educate the public? There is no autopilot system that I'm aware of, where there doesn't need to a pilot ready to take over at any time pretty much exactly the same as Tesla's autopilot.

I'm not a pilot, but i'm pretty sure that, cruising along over the atlantic at 30000ft, the pilot doesn't have to be on split-second watch all the time. If the autopilot has a problem, it'll emit some noise, the pilot puts their coffee away and starts to look for what's up.

If you're in a car, cruising on the highway on "full auto", it's nigh impossible too maintain the same level of concentration like when you're actively in control. (and if it were, it would make the autopilot useless)